44 
THE PEACH-TREE, 
sally fruitless and short-lived. The doctrine is no 
longer believed in England, that all the grafts of 
particular kinds of fruit have died, so we can not 
account for the disease of the peach on any sim¬ 
ilar principle. Our summer and fall pears do well, 
though the vergaloos, and some other varieties, 
have for several years failed, yet they appear to 
be recovering; but of peaches all may be said to 
have failed in this locality. 
It must be one of the causes enumerated below, 
which produced the disease in question. 
First. Some sickly tree must have been im¬ 
ported, or some deleterious locality must have 
roduced the disease called yellows, (I know of no 
etter name,) and by its contagious qualities, dis¬ 
seminated itself throughout the country, like the 
small-pox, and other contagious diseases. Some 
sensible nursery-men, in the state of New York, 
would as soon have a case of yellow-fever in their 
nursery of children, as a tree infected with the 
yellows in their nursery of trees. To be sure, 
nothing similar in the vegetable kingdom is 
known; in fact, the death and corruption of seed, 
and the decay and rottenness of the tree, are the 
food of their progeny. But if this doctrine be the 
true one, we may have some relief in quarantine 
laws and sanitary regulations as to the transport¬ 
ation of trees. Trees and plants might be smoked, 
as, in some countries, they smoke letters! 
Gentlemen who believe in contagion , recom¬ 
mend immediate removal and destruction of the 
diseased tree. Now this ought not to be objected 
to—for a new tree can be so easily procured—ex¬ 
cept that this plan abandons all idea of a remedy. 
They should, at least, leave some of them to be 
subjected to experiment. We dismiss the above 
position, and call upon its advocates for the rea¬ 
sons of their belief. 
Second. The next possible cause of this dis¬ 
ease, we enumerate the climate, including changes 
of weather, warmth, rain and drought, frosts, and 
easterly winds. Many intelligent persons attrib¬ 
ute the disease of the peach to one or more of the 
causes above mentioned. In confirmation of this, 
might be quoted the European opinion, that frost 
has at several different periods killed the sycamore, 
and it is said in the United States, that the 
American sycamore was killed in 1841 by 
fro^t; and well-informed persons think this tree 
since 1841 has continued to be affected, especially 
in the state of New York, by frost. 
Now I enumerate the following reasons as con¬ 
clusive, in my mind, against the theory that frost 
has anything to do with the yellows , or the gen¬ 
eral declension of the peach. 
Our climate has not changed, but is the same 
as it was when the peach produced abundantly. 
Neither tables, nor tradition, represent any mate¬ 
rial alteration ; to frost we have always been sub¬ 
ject. The peach is not a tender tree. The Octo¬ 
ber cling-stone is frequently in fine health, and 
with fruit on, long after the frost, when all the 
potatoes, all the melons, peppers, beans, &c., are 
cut off. The apricot, and nectarine, which come 
forward and bloom before the peach, grow well 
in the gardens in our cities, and in the coun¬ 
try, when well protected, and give abundance of 
fruit. Now if frost was the evil, these trees, par¬ 
ticularly those protected, coming out first, and 
liable to the same frosts as the peach, should 
blister up and die with the yellows. 
In an account of the spring of 1836 on the Conti¬ 
nent, in one of the British magazines, the loss 
of the crop of grapes, pears, apples, &c., from an 
untimely frost, is mentioned, but it states that the 
peach-trees never looked finer. 
Again, is it reasonable to say that although for 
a hundred years the peach-tree bore without be¬ 
ing affected by frost, yet for the last thirty years 
there has regularly been a frost each year suf¬ 
ficient to destroy the peach-fruit, and kill the tree ? 
The state of the atmosphere, easterly winds, &c., 
are all about the same as when the peach-tree was 
in perfection, no material change is alleged by 
anybody. We therefore dismiss all these doc¬ 
trines, and adopt the only rational one in our judg¬ 
ment ; that the yellows in peach-trees is produced 
by insects. To prove our position, we shall mainly 
refer to written authority of the most valuable 
character. 
Mr. Keen, the great English gardener says, 
that “in 1834, when the blossom-buds of his 
peach-trees were as large as hemp-seed, a solu¬ 
tion of lime, sulphur, and soot, was thrown on his 
trees, and not a single blistered leaf was to be 
seen.” Now it is believed that the blister of the 
leaves is an invariable precursor of the yellows. 
The soot and sulphur would not keep off frost. 
The American Orchardist, a Boston work, rep¬ 
resents the curculio (the grub-worm) as the great 
enemy of the peach. The author says, “ he never 
saw the yellows in New England.” Now New 
England is less subject, from the cold, to insects, 
and more liable to injury from frost, and yet ac¬ 
cording to this authority, there is no yellows there. 
New York, and the states adjacent, may have pro¬ 
duced insects unknown in New England,—though 
the writer believes that the yellows is in New 
England, and the insects producing it, too. The 
statements hereafter, although they tally (and on 
that account this article has been written) with 
the experience of the writer, yet the main facts 
and opinions expressed are from the most modem 
European and American authorities. 
The aphides, or plant-lice, are the enemy which 
produces the yellows , and destroys the peach-tree. 
This family of insects embraces a great variety. 
The apple-louse, the cabbage-louse, rose-louse, and 
willow-louse, of popular designation, for they are 
best named, for our purpose, by the particular tree 
or plant selected as their domicil. These different 
kinds of lice subsist, sometimes on the roots, par¬ 
ticularly the cabbage, and among flowers, on the 
roots of the asters, but on the peach they attack 
the leaves, bark, and tender twigs. The apple- 
louse commences at the surface of the ground, at¬ 
tacking the different parts of the tree. 
Curtis, in an excellent article in the Journal of 
the Royal Horticultural Society, remarks, that there 
is no tribe of insects so universally distributed, or 
exceeding in multitudes the plant-lice; that prob¬ 
ably there is not a plant from the smallest grass, 
to the most stately tree, that is altogether exempt 
from this pigmy. Linnaeus considered every plant 
